I’m starting to notice spam accounts here — accounts that do nothing but post and crosspost links to low-quality or promotional websites.

My inclination is to simply downvote and report each spam post, but this maybe generates a lot of mod queue activity for community moderators. And when an account is used for nothing but spam, presumably that would be better handled by admins banning the account than by each community moderator needing to respond individually to each spam post.

And maybe by the time mods or admins get around to looking at the reports, they’ve already noticed the spam and responded to it directly.

So — if you’re a community moderator or an instance admin, what are your preferences for receiving reports of spam accounts? Is it worth it to you to get reports of spam posts, or messages pointing out a spammer account, or would you prefer that we just downvote, block, and move on?

  • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Eventually I’m assuming sites will need to implement some type of auto mod system when they get to scale. It’s only a matter of time before bots and bad actors see these sites as valuable targets

    • fubo@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      There are spam accounts already today. It’s not a theoretical question. I’ve run Internet services before and done anti-spam work for them. I already know the theory; what I want to know is what helps the actual people who are doing the actual work on this service here.

  • Anony Moose@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Mods/admins, please, please, please don’t let get Lemmy/kbin be overrun by spam and bots like Reddit!

      • Anony Moose@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I hear what you’re saying, but personally I feel like bot posts are worse than no posts. Every time I see a bot submission, it feels artificial. When I see a silly little post about somebody’s cat, or their attempt at an original meme, it feels far more genuine.

    • johntash@eviltoast.org
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      1 year ago

      This is my recommendation too. We can always improve mod tools to make things easier in the future. I don’t think a user should have to think about the “correct” way to report something usually.